We’re learning how to pray this month at church using the model ACTS – Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. The strength of using a model like ACTS is:
1) It helps to ensure our prayers are not all about ‘me’; it helps us to focus on God – who he is and what he has done.
2) It gives structure to prayer time, which helps stop our minds from wandering.
This article focuses on T – Thanksgiving.
It’s hard to be thankful when you are regularly told, ‘You deserve it.’ People say this with the belief that if you work hard, you earn your rewards. I deserved that iced coffee or a double-scoop choc trio ice cream indulgence. I’m so glad I went to the gym because I feel much better. I’m feeling good because I got up early and got that job out of the way. These things might be accurate, but this way of thinking stops us from being thankful to God because the person we are grateful to is ourselves, not God! So, how do we change who we are thankful to?
A Thankful Heart
In the Bible, God calls us to give thanks. The apostle Paul says, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Here we see that thankfulness is something we are to do, a command. The writer of Hebrews writes, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). In this verse, we are urged to ‘be thankful’, which is more a posture, an attitude of the heart.
We know that Christians should give thanks. We can list many things we can be thankful for—for God’s love for us in Jesus, the forgiveness of sin, and being a child of God, to name a few. But I wonder if many of us don’t give thanks in our prayer time because we are not grateful to God. If a thankfulness doctor examined our hearts, what would the doctor find: a thankful heart or an entitled one?
To cultivate a thankful heart, we must be reminded that what we have is not something we have earned but something given to us by God. This is where we need to understand that keyword: grace. Grace is an undeserved gift. By its nature, it is not something we work towards or deserve. There are two types of grace: saving grace and common grace.
Photo by Delaney Van on Unsplash
Saving Grace
Salvation through faith in Christ is described as God’s gift of grace to us, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). It is not by work! When we understand this great truth, we can easily be thankful for salvation in Jesus and inheriting a ‘kingdom that cannot be shaken.’ If we don’t understand saving grace, we won’t give thanks to God. Maybe you haven’t received God’s saving grace, and in that case, today is a good day to accept God’s gift of Christ, who died on your behalf, so that you can have eternal life.
This gift is a great place to start when giving thanks to God. Dear God, I am thankful for… your gift of grace, which means I’m now alive with you forever! Dear God, I am grateful for… your promise of a place in your unshakable kingdom. Giving thanks starts with God’s saving grace. Even if we’re not feeling thankful, we can still give thanks. Our feelings don’t change our reality in Christ, and our feelings, whatever they may be, don’t mean we are not recipients of God’s grace.
Common Grace
What might it look like to thank God for iced coffee, that gym session, or that early morning job you could knock off your to-do list because you got up early? These things are not salvation items – even for coffee drinkers who thirst for a caffeine kickstart. How can we develop thankfulness for everyday blessings? For this, we need common grace.
Common grace, in a nutshell, is this – all good things come from God. It is grace that God gives to all people, which is why it is called ‘common’. We see an example in Acts: “Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:7). Common grace. Coffee, exercise, technology, relationships, etc., are not something we earn; they are not something we deserve, but they, too, are given to us by God because of his goodness and kindness.
Once we grasp grace—grace in salvation and common grace—we can learn to be thankful and give thanks on all occasions, which is God’s will for us in Jesus Christ.
If we understand this, it will help us be thankful and give thanks for everything. The language of ‘I deserved this…’ will disappear from our speech and be replaced with thankfulness to God. God, thank you for this iced coffee; God, thank you for that gym session; God, thank you for that… friendship, fishing trip, meal, time with my children, holiday. So maybe take some time now to thank God!
